Ray Henderson: Anchor of a Great Songwriting Team

Today is the birthday of the great Tin Pan Alley songwiter Ray Henderson (b. Raymond Brost, 1896-1970). He is best known as the “Henderson” in “Henderson/ Brown/ DeSylva“, the great songwriting team that gave us “Bye Bye Blackbird”, “Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue”, “I’m Sitting on Top of the World” (all 1925), “The Birth of the Blues” (1926), “The Varsity Drag” (1927), “You’re The Cream In My Coffee” (1928), “Button Up Your Overcoat”, “You Are My Lucky Star” “I’m A Dreamer, Aren’t We All”, and “Keep Your Sunny Side Up” (1929). When I was 19 or 20, I found a record in the library that contained most of these tunes, and I played it and played it and played it. It taught me a lot about songwriting.

Henderson started out as an accompanist in vaudeville. As composer he was associated with several editions of George White’s Scandals and numerous book shows, including several starring Bert Lahr (Hold Everything, Flying High and Hot-Cha!) . After 1936 Broadway work started to cool off too although he did write the music for the extremely successful Ziegfeld Follies of 1943, which ran almost a year.

Now, here’s Jolie singing one of Henderson, Brown & DeSylva’s best numbers. If you play it this morning, I guarantee the rest of your day will be a happy one:

Related

Published by travsd

Writer and performer Trav S.D. (www.travsd.com) has written for the NY Times, the Village Voice, American Theatre, Time Out NY, Reason, the Villager and numerous other publications. He has been in the vanguard of New York’s vaudeville and burlesque scenes since 1995 when he launched his company Mountebanks, which has presented hundreds of top variety acts ranging from Todd Robbins to Dirty Martini to Lady Rizo to the Flying Karamazov Brothers. He has directed his own plays, revues and solo pieces in NYC since 1989 at such venues as Joe’s Pub, La Mama, Dixon Place, Theater for the New City, the Ohio Theatre and the Brick. In 2014 he produced and directed the smash-hit I’ll Say She Is, the first ever revival of the Marx Brothers hit 1924 Broadway show in the NY International Fringe Festival. He is perhaps best known for his 2005 book No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, recently cited by Bette Midler in People magazine as one of her favorite book. More about All Things Trav S.D. are at: http://travsd.com/
View all posts by travsd

1. I would check the volume controls on your computer and/or the Youtube window when you play the clip. If you can’t hear anything, my guess is that you either have it muted, or the sound is turned all the way down.

2. Regarding the darkness, I would check the brightness control on your computer monitor. Other folks report being able to see and read the blog just fine.

How can I find a link to click on in your email? Can you be more specific on it? My speakers are fine. As far as the Dark background here my screen is as bright as my eyes can tolerate..So, why not make it light Gray? If one of us cannot see what is there easily then that is one too many.One of my cousins was in Vaudeville in the Orpheum Circuit on the West Coast . Want to see all you have.Thank you.